Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Launches On PC

The latest addition to the long-celebrated Rainbow Six series pits five attackers against five defenders in cramped interior locations rife with destructible objects. The action is frantic and impulsive, and you’ll need stay in constant communication with your teammates if you want to prevail. There’s no respawning, though you can be revived by other friendly players if they manage to locate you. Because of the one-death aspect, Rainbow Six Siege retains a delightfully tense mood where each of your actions, no matter how miniscule, can mean the difference between success and failure. But even when you do get picked off, you won’t feel left out, as you can still use a map’s numerous security cameras to relay enemy locations to your living and breathing squad mates. You’ll be akin to the angels on their shoulders, warning them of breaching into a room from the wrong spot, or stumbling into a well-planned trap.

In Hostage Rescue, one of the stand-out game modes, the attackers must locate and rescue a captured person, and whisk them out to safety. Of course, the defenders have the opposite goal, and are looking to retain their human prize while simultaneously wiping out the invaders. As Game Designer Andrew Witts describes it in an Ubisoft blog post: “The hostage reacts to what is going on in a multiplayer match by shielding himself/herself during gunfights and calling out to the attacking team to let them know where he or she is when a defender is not on guard. Because this is a living character, the hostage can in fact die, so players on both sides must be careful not to kill [them] because when [they] die, the team that is responsible for [their] death will ultimately lose that round.”

As the attackers, you’ll have a chance to scout the map before the mission begins by using observation drones, attempting to spot the enemy lurkers as well as the hostage’s hiding spot. As the defenders, you’ll have extra time to place deadly traps and shore up your position, protecting structural weaknesses and fatal flanking spots in the surrounding areas.

One of Rainbow Six’s Seige’s most awesome aspects is being able to destroy almost anything you can see, and using the improvised holes as an advantage over your opponents. You can detonate entire sections of walls to storm a fortified area from the rear, bash open boarded up doors just enough to fire through while keeping yourself in cover, rip apart floors and toss grenades through the tattered openings, randomly shoot through walls to take down your foes without them even seeing you, and pretty much whatever else your creativity conjures up. Depending on the attack/defense character you choose, you’ll have some unique tools at your disposal. For example, Castle can deploy Kevlar barricades to protect otherwise vulnerable gaps, while the offense-based Ash can lob breach-charges, shredding walls from a nice, safe distance. There’s also the Recruit class, which serves as a highly customizable role without any of the special gear that the others get.

Rainbow Six Siege is mostly about getting online and playing with other people, but there’s also a single-player mode where you can hone your skills against bots in training missions. This is a good way to get wrapped around the dynamics of rappelling and breaching and clearing before venturing forth with your pals. You can even unlock all the same stuff that you’ll get in live matches, such as Renown Points (Rainbow Six Siege’s in-game currency), Stars, and additional characters. Speaking of unlockable content, Ubisoft already has the game’s DLC planned out of the first year. There’ll be four new maps, eight extra operators (characters), and plenty of additional game modes and decorative apparel. All of the new content will be partitioned up into four distinct seasons. Each of the new maps will be available for free as soon as they release; you won’t need to spend Renown Points or real-life cash to get them.

If you’re in the mood for co-op, you and four other friends can take part in Terrorist Hunt, where you’ll combine your skills to conquer the AI enemies in loads of different objectives. You can also play co-op in the pre-set offline scenarios. There’s even a spectator cam, where you can join and watch live multiplayer matches, switching from different cameras to view each team’s tactics. Using the spectator cam is a smart way to pick up on what other CTU operators are doing to trounce the competition, and it’s handy for learning approaches you might not have considered otherwise.

In addition to the hectic action, team-based gameplay, and massive scale of object destruction, Rainbow Six Siege offers some truly impressive graphics, and it looks best on the PC. By using an NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU such as the GTX 970, GTX 980, and GTX 980 Ti, you’ll be treated to a visual feast of NVIDIA GameWorks effects, including TXAA and HBAO+. You’ll also have access to GeForce Experience, which ensures your graphics card drivers will always be as up to date as possible, making Rainbow Six Siege as smooth and optimized as possible. If you’re an NVIDIA Shield owner, you can even stream your in-game adventures to the device so you won’t even have to leave the comfort of your plush bean bag.

Conclusion

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six brings a whole new level of team-based FPS tactical gameplay combined with a diverse and complex destructible environment that encourages improvisation—you’ll never play the same map the same way twice. Whether you’re blocking access to a hostage by laying down nefarious traps and plotting ambushes, or going on the offensive by rappelling through windows and breach-charging walls, you’re in for one frantic and amazing ride. All of this action is further enhanced by a GeForce GTX GPU and the power of NVIDIA’s GameWorks tech, coupled with the driver-support, one-click graphics optimizations, and streaming features of GeForce Experience. This all boils down to the PC’s Rainbow Six Siege as the version of choice for gamers everywhere.